Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  Now, this was what he wanted Prindy to do: take a bag of tucker to last him a week if need be — plenty of tinned stuff here — and a quiet riding donkey, and go to the next bore back, eighteen miles, then turn East and after a couple of miles he would come to half of Billy’s donks feeding on the leaves of a type of kurrajong that grew there in plenty. ‘The buggers can nearly climb trees, yo’ know,’ said Billy. He would make a camp out there. He could come in with the donks for water at the bore of a night as they did. He, a pupil of Bobwirridirridi, who it seemed was an old mate of Billy’s, would need no advice on how to conceal his movements and otherwise keep a jump ahead of everybody. Anyway, it was easy to hide along with a mob of donks. When Billy reckoned the coast was clear, he would start moving northward, and when he reached that bore, would sent his blackboy, Barney Ninyarra, to bring him and the donkeys in. At the moment Barney and his wife, Nanitch, were over in the scrub there with the local blacks, boozing. Prindy need have no fear of betrayal by them, because they stood in relationship to him as father and mother. Still, it would be best they didn’t know anything about the escapade till they were away from here. Right?

  Within half an hour, mounted on a brown jenny named Becky, and with some mates of hers for company and to allay suspicion that a single set of fresh tracks might arouse, Prindy set out northward, unobserved by anyone except Billy, and with no one else except Bridie Cullity aware of the escapade, because Con, perhaps seduced by that Narishman piping, had taken to the bottle himself, to be sure ‘be the nip’, when it came to the accounting.

  III

  Thus began yet another phase of the career of him known variously as Prindy, Prendy, Ah Loy, Alroy, and such secret names as his black godfathers had conferred on him for use if and when he reached a degree of maturity and trustworthiness. He had been with the donkeys out in that patch of kurrajong country six days when Billy Brew’s blackboy came to fetch him and them. Barney Ninyarra came tchinekin, not out of malice or fear, but because he had caught a strange sweet sound as he neared, and thus come upon what must have struck him as a wondrous sight, the way he stared, and the way he related it to his master later: the boy sitting with his back to the bulbous trunk of a kurrajong playing on his bamboo flute to a packed semi-circle of donkeys whose attitudes left no doubt about their enchantment, although among them, so Barney reported, were some of the meanest of the team, like Bollocky Bill and Queen of Sheba. When Billy heard of it and asked Prindy, the boy said that he’d found the animals specially liked Indian music. Billy required a test, and saw the same effect for himself, on the whole team. Billy likened it to the quieting of restless cattle in drovers’ mobs by the night-rider’s singing to ’em or playing the mouth-organ; and being one who liked to delve into cause and effect he reckoned that it was some atavistic strain at work, because these donkeys were of the breed called Onager, originating in northwestern Asia. Being also a resourceful man, he reckoned that the oddity might be put to good use in making the team easier to handle during harnessing-up. It was tried, but only to prove that a donkey isn’t as silly as reputed. The intractable ones behaved even worse for having their musical interlude spoilt by the intrusion of rough hands and whirling whips urging them into the lineup for submission to collar and trace. An experimenter, too, Billy said, ‘Try the bloody bastards with The Road to Gundagai.’ Prindy began to pipe with extra vigour. Bollocky Bill started a bolt that held up the harnessing for a couple of hours. If Prindy supposed from that bit of cause and effect that he wouldn’t have to play that Bloody Rubbitch again he was wrong, because the ever-resourceful Billy saw use in it: ‘Y’know, we could keep that toon for huntin’ the buggers away when they get crowdin’ round the waggon o’ full-moon nights a-psalm-singin’.’

  Billy told an amusing tale of Mick Cusky’s running about: ‘Like a meatant full o’ arsenic.’ Sure enough, he had descended first on Billy, and even with Billy’s show and proof of innocence, declared that he believed he had connived at Prindy’s disappearance to make a fool of him. Still, he had acted on Billy’s suggestion that the miners were responsible, and had gone after them, surely to have his leg pulled, because he made no less than three trips to the goldfields, dashing back each time to try to catch Billy by surprise. Then he had taken a trip to the Boulder, on learning that one load of miners had gone that way, heading for the South. Still he hadn’t called the police, as the Cullitys would know, and more than that, had asked Bridie and Con to keep quiet about it in talking on the phone, confessing to them frankly his fear of his boss. It seemed that Dr Cobbity would be going South for Christmas and that Eddy would be getting his big chance by being appointed as his actual deputy with Dr McQuegg, who usually took over the Protectorship. But what hope would he have if Cobbity learnt of this? In the end he’d had to ask even Billy to keep it dark. That was when he’d seen Billy harnessing up. Billy reported, ‘I says to him, I says: “You got the flamin’ cheek to hask me to conceal your gross hinhefficiency after haccusin’ me o’ connivance?” . . . I’ll teach you all them big words, Ngahgung. I’ll teach you plenty . . . readin’, writin’, ’rithmetic. I ain’t such a higgerant old bush-whacker as I make out, you know.’ To secure his co-operation, Eddy had presented him with a bottle of rum at parting and hinted at a fairer go from the Aborigines Department than he’d had in the past. Nevertheless, they must keep constantly on the alert, not only in expectation of further investigation by Eddy, but by police, because you never knew what the erratic Silvertail Bastard might do. There was always a riding donk or two saddled and bridled ready for emergencies such as misbehaviour or mishap amongst the tailing mob or the intrusion of other animals, such as branded cattle, which must be hunted off as soon as possible to avoid complications with the law, or unbranded, which must be dealt with discreetly otherwise, or horses making a nuisance of themselves with their superior airs amongst their poor relations, or dingoes after foals. Prindy must be ready to mount and away the instant dust was reported on northern or southern horizons by day or the glow of headlights by night, leaving no trace behind him. Fortunately in this country you could see anyone approaching by motor vehicle a good five miles off; and no one would be travelling otherwise at this time of year.

  They had half a dozen false alarms before reaching Mt Prince Albert, which took them as many days. They didn’t go near the homestead (at least not with the team) but skirted it by following a track that took them to water a good two miles to eastward. This was for a combination of reasons, according to what Billy said, amongst them being the enmity of Ned Knowles towards him, another that he wanted a couple of the Mt Prince Albert goats, which were renowned as the best eating in the country, just as its bovine stock was considered the worst. Conditions were perfect for goat-duffing, Igulgul almost at the full and the season such as to have caused a concentration of dingoes in the vicinity with just such intentions as Billy Brew’s. As Billy said, it was always best to share your thieving of small stock — goats, pigs, poultry — with the dingoes, since not only did they get all the blame, but made it easier by putting the victims into that proper state of accepting their fate which is the quintessence, the quiddity, the number-one principle of good hunting. A clever huntsman starts by Singing his quarry. Hence the dingoes’ howling. But while you yourself may imitate this part of his procedure, you can’t assume that Smell of Death which goes along with him. Therefore, you need a dingo downwind, while you come a-howlin’ upwind.

  Usually Barney and Billy worked together with the dingoes on this kind of forraging; but since it was reckoned that the sooner Prindy got broken into it the better, it was decided that Billy would stay out of it on this occasion. Barney and Prindy set out soon after moonrise. The raid was more than a success. Prindy’s talent with ventriloquism turned it into something that rendered Barney helpless with laughter, when later he came to describe it. Not only did they come home with three fat young wethers and a milking nanny, but two chooks and a muskovy duck, the former walking quietly, as their kind so conveniently do
to their doom, despite their capriciousness in all other ways, the latter in a sack, a corner of which Barney had to keep stuffed in his mouth for some time to stifle his mirth. The great moment of the raid was when Prindy caused old Ned and young Nugget, who were sneaking about on different sides of the house with rifles, to believe they heard a dingo right in the house and to rish in after it from opposite directions and apparently to collide, judging by the bad language and the screaming of old Mum. However, Barney had to keep stuffing the sack into his mouth for much longer than expected, and the doomed goats kept walking further, because they got back to within Prindy’s extra-long earshot of the camp to find that someone was there besides those they’d left, Billy, Nanitch, the two ‘bully-dogs’, and, of course, the donks. From reconnoitring, Prindy came back with the startling information that the additional presence was none other than that of Mick Cusky!

  Eddy had come tchinekin. At least that’s what Billy said the man had done, when at last the raiders were able to come home with their spoils, after hearing Eddy depart, not simply from the camp but from the neighbourhood in his car, which he had left up on the main road. It seemed that Eddy had told Billy he’d seen the fresh tracks of the turn-out and heard the donks and thought he’d just look in, leaving his car behind in case the track was too rough for it. Because there was a stiff little nor’wester blowing off a thunderstorm somewhere away up top, and he was downwind from the camp, even the dogs hadn’t become aware of his presence until he was right there in the camp. And there was Prindy’s flute lying on the kerosene case on which he had been sitting playing it by the fire after supper. Billy just had time to knock it off as Eddy went to seat himself on the box, by throwing a sack on it for him, and then with a kick had more or less covered it with sand. ‘Yeah,’ said Billy, ‘the bastard come tchinekin all right. His eyes were all over the place . . . even took a look in the waggon sayin’ it was a great way to live, jes wanderin’ around the country like a gypsy. When I said I wasn’t no flamin’ gypsy, but a licensed carrier, he says: “You don’t want to go doin’ nothin’ that’ll lose you your licence, do you,” then goes on to tell me how he’s on his way to Town to take over from Cobbity; and you never know, he says, Cobbity mightn’t come back, and he’ll be the Big Boy in the Abo business, and anybody breakin’ the flamin’ Ordinances, he’s goin’ ’o break them . . . so, what’s called Tacitly, which means out the side o’ your mouth, mind yo’ step, Billy Brew. If he’d’a’ad two-penn’orth o’ bush-savvy he’d a noticed your tracks . . . look at ’em, all over the place. But he wasn’t such a mungus about Barney bein’ missin’. I told him Barney’d gone across to the homestead to look up relations. He says, ‘What, a blackfeller go walkin’ ’bout night-time on his rown?’ I ups and says it’s still daylight when Barney went. But I’m sure he didn’t be’lieve me . . . and starts talkin’ ’bout you, young feller, bein’ mates with Nugget Knowles . . . like he reckoned you’d gone over with Barney. I don’ know . . . I might be too suspicious . . . that means I’m thinkin’ too hard ’bout it . . . but I got a feelin’ he’s a wake-up. Still, don’t you worry. We’ll beat him. We just got ’o keep our eyes peeled all the while.’

  It wasn’t so much a matter of keeping eyes open as noses, it turned out, when next morning, as the team came back to the main road on the northern side of the Knowleses’ homestead, there was Mick Cusky tchinekin again. Fortunately that same wind was blowing. The dogs smelt him as he lurked in ambush, and growled, and the donkeys pricked their ears. Prindy was off like a shot. The team went on as if those who drove it hadn’t the least idea that they were under observation; Billy up on the driving seat with his bullocky’s whip and the name of every long-eared loafer ready on his tongue; Barney, mounted, trotting along cracking his stockwhip. Billy had called the dogs behind. He put on a show of great surprise at seeing Eddy appear as if out of nowhere, the hat tipped over an eye: ‘Well, bugger me if it ain’t Mick Cusky agin! What . . . you thumbin’ a lift, or sumpin? What happen’ yo’ car . . . Knowles’s goats eat it?

  Eddy grinned, casting an eye to the rear of the waggon, to which last night’s spoils were tethered: ‘Speakin’ o’ Knowles’s goats . . .’

  ‘Wha’ yo’ mean by that?’

  ‘Dingoes were supposed to have raided Knowles’s goats last night.’

  ‘Yeah . . . and they mistook old Ned for one of ’em, eh?’

  Eddy chuckled, ‘Not exactly . . . but lookin’ round this mornin’ Ned and Nugget found the dingoes’d left human tracks.’

  ‘Well, wha’ yo’ know! Course everybody knows the critters’ll pinch yo’ boots you leave ’em lyin’ round . . . to eat ’em. But I never ’eard tell of ’em wearin’ the boots they pinched.’

  Eddy guffawed, ‘No, these dingoes left barefoot human tracks.’

  ‘Well, blow me down! Them dawgs’ll come at anything, won’t they? I knoo a bloke one time, a drover, they raided his camp, pinched his boots, belt, pipe, pants, everything . . . includin his cheque-book . . . and next thing he finds he’s overdrawn at the bank.’

  ‘No doubt about you, Billy!’ said Eddy. ‘But d’you mind if I take a look in your wagoon?’

  ‘Well . . . I’d kind o’ like to know why. Not thinkin’ o’ gettin’ one built to same specifications to go gypsyin’ in, be any chance?’

  ‘No . . . just to see if there mightn’t be a dingo or two sneakin’ a ride.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, you can . . . but if you find one, don’t go upsettin’ him. I’m kind of partial to dingoes, as wild critters’t never could be brought to lick a master’s hand. If only the poor Abos’d had half the gumption ’o the dingoes, man . . . you wouldn’t ’ave that cushy job o’ yours ‘oundin’ ’em.’

  ‘I’m not hounding anybody,’ snapped Eddy, heading for the rear. I’m only carrying out the Law of the Land . . .’

  ‘Sound like old Coon-Coon, now.’

  Eddy climbed up over the tail-board, took a good look through, came out by the front. Billy said, ‘You didn’t get bit, eh? I keep a couple o’ death-adders in there to discourage sticky-beakin’ . . . they must be gettin’ too tame, I reckon. I’ll have to chuck ’em out and get fresh ones . . .’

  Eddy took a stand on the bit of a platform below the seat, pushed his hat back, and looking very official and sounding it, said, ‘Now look here, Billy . . . I’ve got a lot of respect for you in many ways . . .’

  ‘Now . . . ain’t that a shame, when I got none whatsoever for you!’

  ‘I’m talking seriously, Billy. I’ve always felt you had that boy . . .’

  ‘What boy? Ain’t we talkin’ about dingoes and goats?’

  ‘Yes . . . we are. And I’ve no time to be funny about it. I’m convinced now that you’ve got the boy. I’ve exhausted every other possibility of where he can be. This morning there are his fresh tracks following four goats from Knowles’s . . . and you’ve got four goats tied on behind, which you never had when I came to see you last night . . .’

  ‘Think I keep the poor bastards tied up all night . . . like you keep your Abos?’

  ‘I’m warning you, Billy. The boy’s tracks . . .’

  ‘Who identified the tracks as this boy’s yo’ talkin’ about?’

  ‘Never mind. The boy was camped there with me a couple of weeks back. We were down the creek in a sheltered place. His tracks were still there for comparison. Nugget Knowles . . .’

  ‘Haw . . . if you’re relying on the trackin’ ability of Nugget or Knobby Knowles, or old Ned for that matter, all you’ll be led to is the blacks’ camp and the gins . . .’

  ‘I said I’m warning you, Billy. I know you’ve got that boy. I guess it’s too much to ask you to hand him over to me . . . and, frankly, at the moment he’d be an embarrassment to me. But I want him. As I’ve told you, I’m going up to take over the Protectorship. What I’d advise you to do when you get to the Charlotte is hand him over to the police officer there. If you don’t, I’ll put Cahoon and Jinbul onto you. There won’t be any silly chains
this time, just the proper carrying out of the law . . . the law that treats abduction, kidnapping, as one of the most serious crimes in the book. Got the message?’ Eddy began to descend the steps. At the foot he looked up, added: ‘Be seein’ you, Billy . . . hope it won’t be in court.’

  ‘It won’t be in hell, either,’ said Billy. ‘I don’t expect to go to the other place . . . but I’m sure they got departments in hell . . . and they’d never put me in with shit’ouse rats like you, McCusky.’

  Eddy buttoned his face up tight, pulled the hat down lower, and turned and went away to his parked car, got into it, went off to his official exaltation in a cloud of dust. Billy waited till even the smell of his dust had blown away sou’east.

  That afternoon all the dust was settled and for days to come by a heavy downpour from that southward-drifting war between Old Tchamala and the Cloud Spirits. And there was sweet pickin’ now all the way to Charlotte Springs, not only to fatten the donks, but their drivers through the medium of those poor doomed trailers on behind. Minds could be broadened, too, without the former constant threat of disapproving authority. Not that alertness was dropped. But having some assurance of being left alone made a big difference to the intellectual communion so far something to be snatched in scraps rather than in the long luxurious indulgence that could be made of it both by preceptor and proselyte. They sat by day high above the trudging mass of flesh and blood that hauled them singing like yoked slaves, or by night by small camp-fires that could not dim the glory of the wonder slowly rolling overhead in terms of astronomical science and Greek mythology. There was time to translate big words, to learn to count to one hundred, to show that every eightieth telegraph pole had a mark on it which meant a mile had been covered, to give some idea of what time and distance meant combined, even if you did travel in a way that had been described as jes wanderin’ ’round the country like a gypsy. What was a gypsy? Let’s get out the big Webster’s Dictionary. Well, what d’you know! The word meant Egyptians, but the people were originally Indians. The things you learnt! Every day you learnt something new and wonderful, if you had a mind to it. A wonderful world it was — only for the bastards in it. What did Bastard mean? Jesus — who’d believe it meant a Pack Saddle!